Silvia Otte Photos of Washington DC

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Beautiful photos of Washington DC by Silvia Otte. She takes images of memorials and landmarks commonplace to every Washingtonian, and refreshes them with deep, rich colors and expansive wide-angle shots. This photo of the Dupont Circle Metro station (right) is perfect; that’s exactly what it looks like from the bottom of the well. It’s so deep down, and the escalator is so long, that our pastor calls it the “Jacob’s Ladder” Metro station.

Also be sure to check the other photographers across the top of the page.

Useful Blogger Tools

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Blogging Accessories: I’m not planning on downloading or subscribing to any of them, but you bloggers out there might find them useful or interesting:

BlogRolling: Remote service which maintains your list of blog links so you don’t have to worry about the HTML. Generates code for you to cut and paste into your Blogger template.

Posterchild: PHP-based inline commenting system, similar to BlogKomm. Server-side only, so Blogspot bloggers can’t use it. DotComments is still around if you want to use that. (Also server-side.)

pMachine: PHP/MySQL blogging engine. Lots of features.

Hivelogic Email Encoder: Protect your email address from spamming and harvesters by translating it into character entities hidden in javascript document.write commands.

MSNBC weblogs

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Go here and scroll down a bit till you see the pictures and the word “weblogs.” Yes, that’s right, folks. MSNBC now has blogs. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Genta Ogami King Con

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G.O. Group closely resembled a cult, with staffers beating on a taiko drum and chanting Ogami’s 10 commandments at daily meetings. Every Monday, they viewed his weekly video address, in which he stuttered gems like “follow the path of truth” while dressed in a fresh Versace outfit. Employees then had to write reviews of that day’s performance. Ogami read these diligently, and had underlings seek out authors of bad reviews for scoldings. Workers were made to sit in rivers in the lotus position and stand in the rain shouting Ogami’s commandments. He took the stage on these outings, rambling for hours about the Japanese spirit and the country’s honorable role in World War II. “We all shut up and stuck it out because we needed the salary,” sighs Toshinori Nakajima, an executive appointed acting president before he quit last fall. “No one actually believed in any of the stuff.”

King Con. Time Asia on Genta Ogami and G. Cosmos. The article even has screenshots of his movie, Blades of the Sun, where he plays a samurai on a quest for banaba tea.

Candy From Strangers

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Candy From Strangers, an old Salon article detailing the gritty, greedy underside of camgirl culture. It’s like all the nasty parts of high school: only online with pictures, wishlists, and blogs.

DC with Ruffy.org

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It’s been a fun and eventful Sunday. The choir sang Austin Lovelace’s God is My Strong Salvation; pretty easy piece, mostly unison, breaking into four parts for just a few measures. For communion we broke the standard Baptist tradition of passing around bread and wine- er, juice, in favor of having worshippers come to the table to collect bread, Catholic-style, then stand in a circle around the sanctuary as a community while we partook of the elements. Choir practice covered a pretty diverse range of song: Schubert, Bach, Handel, Jane Marshall, and Moses Hogan. Marshall’s My Eternal King was an especially challenging piece for us basses, with parts going as far down as low C and even a B-flat. I hit regions of my vocal chords I didn’t even know I had.

The afternoon was spent meeting up with Nic of Ruffy.org, who’s visiting Washington for business. We had lunch on Connecticut Avenue and went around for some sightseeing, from Dupont Circle, to the White House, to the Washington Monument, to the Air and Space Museum. Hey Nic, hope you had fun!

Well, while it’s still bright out, I think I’ll go sk8tng for a bit.

Baltimore student housing

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Today’s the day I start searching for cheap student housing in the vicinity of MICA in Baltimore. By late August, I intend to be moved in, settled, and ready to take on a year of hardship.

And learning to drive before then wouldn’t hurt. Man, where does the time go?

Update: I found a great housemate in Little Italy through

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